A HARDLINE Islamic sheikh linked to Al-Qaeda was tightening his grip on the devastated capital of Somalia this weekend after the defeat of secular warlords who have terrorised the city for 15 years.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys emerged as the radical leader of the Union of Islamic Courts, an alliance of religious militias that wrested control of Mogadishu last week from clan leaders whose own reign of terror was featured in the film Black Hawk Down, about the loss of 18 US soldiers there in 1993.

Last week’s Islamist victory was a humiliating blow to American policy in the region. Washington had backed the warlords as a bulwark against Islamic terrorism.

The rise of Aweys, who is on America’s most wanted terrorist list, prompted concern that Somalia could become a haven for Al-Qaeda in the horn of Africa.

The clandestine American operation to back the warlords was funded by the CIA, according to US reports. The CIA paid them to capture Al-Qaeda agents who were believed to be behind the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and a 2002 attack on an Israeli plane and an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, also in Kenya.

The sudden collapse of the warlords has led to recriminations in Washington. The CIA operation, which was run out of the US embassy in Nairobi, has prompted comparisons to the agency’s backing of anti-Soviet Islamic extremists in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

That led to what Middle East experts now call “blowback” — the release of thousands of battle-hardened Islamic extremists trained in terrorist techniques and committed to an international jihad.

Victory in Mogadishu came surprisingly swiftly after months of fighting that left hundreds dead and wounded on the capital’s gutted streets. In the final showdown last week, gunmen loyal to secular warlords fled without much of a fight.

Residents of the capital attributed the Islamists’ support to a popular yearning for law and order, rather than any desire for Islamic government.

The warlords’ reign was characterised by brutal feuds, hostage-taking and extortion. The Islamic Courts’ network of militias made the areas they controlled safe, often by enforcing severe punishments such as the amputation of a hand for a first criminal offence.

Sources in Mogadishu said the 71-year-old Aweys — who keeps an anti-aircraft gun outside the front of his house in Mogadishu — was now planning to advance on Jowhar, where the warlords had regrouped with their militias 60 miles from the city. The warlords warned that they would counterattack.

Watching impotently from Baidoa, 150 miles to the north, was Somalia’s official transitional government, recognised by much of the world but unable to control most of the country.

Aweys first came to prominence as leader of Al-Itihadd Al-Islamiya, a militia linked to Al-Qaeda. At one time a decorated colonel in the Somali army, he now runs madrasah schools where young men train to use guns and explosives.

He is believed to have played a role in the 1998 embassy bombings as well as the killing of foreign aid workers and Kate Peyton, a BBC producer who was shot outside her hotel in Mogadishu last year.

His record as a military commander is erratic, however. In the early 1990s he went to war against Abdullah Yusuf, now head of the weak official government, and lost 1,000 men — almost all his followers — in three weeks of bitter fighting.

Aweys regrouped on Somalia’s border with Ethiopia to create another extremist organisation called Ethiopian Al-Itihadd. The Ethiopian army invaded and he lost all his men for a second time.

Additional reporting: Ian Pocock

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Violent video games won’t corrupt
• Pope Benedict XVI: Alma Mater
• Chávez should know what’s good for him